Straddling the humanities and social sciences: The research process of music scholars

Few research projects have focused on the information needs of the music scholar. What is known about the information needs of the music scholar has been gathered through large-scale studies of various humanistic disciplines. This article describes a six-stage model of the music scholar’s research process. The model was constructed contextually through interviews with 30 music scholars who were asked to describe a recently completed research project. Research activities pertaining to specific stages in the research process are identified and described. This study compares existing models of the research process of other humanities scholars and explores the implications for library and information science professionals.